IT is just what the doctor ordered, because safety hoardings around Bewdley's new medical centre have received remedial treatment from local schoolchildren.

Construction workers at the Dog Lane site have enlisted the help of youngsters from Bewdley Primary School, who through an arts competition, have created a Bewdley mural featuring local landmarks, including the town’s famous bridge over the River Severn.

The arts contest, which pupils entered anonymously after producing their artwork at home, also saw sixth form students from The Bewdley School and Sixth Form Centre supporting the seven winning pupils to re-create their artwork on to the hoardings, which will cheer up the site while construction takes place on the £7 million building. Once the medical centre is completed next summer, it is hoped that elements of the mural will be reduced and turned into a permanent collage within part of the new centre.

Dr Simon Gates a partner at Bewdley Medical Centre said: “We are going to provide Bewdley with a real community hub when the new medical centre is completed and that starts even with the construction of the building itself. The hoardings are there for people’s safety but that does not mean they have to be boring and plain. What the children have done, with the fantastic support of Roger Wilks at developers Benniman and teachers at Bewdley Primary School, is given the site a sense of personality and helped to make it theirs. After all, this is their medical centre and the entire community’s.”

Benniman Construction Group, which is building the state-of-the-art medical centre and library on behalf of the GPs at Wyre Forest Health Partnership, and development partners Matrix Medical, are also set to get local pensioners involved to decorate other parts of the hoardings as part of their role as members of the national Considerate Constructors scheme.

Construction bosses at the site have confirmed the new 25,000 sq ft three-storey medical centre remains on course to open as planned in summer 2016 with the building’s steel structure and much of the ground work completed last month.

The finished building will include a pharmacy, 25 consulting and treatment rooms, meeting spaces, specialist baby changing areas and the latest medical technology to allow doctors to carry out minor operations. It will also house the town’s new library and a public café while having expansion space available to the GPs and complimentary healthcare providers who wish to have a presence in Bewdley.